Did the utilitarian philosophy just dive bomb my head?

You can tell it's summer because there are flies everywhere. Or maybe it's my lousy housekeeping. A fly is buzzing my head, and my cat is just lying on the floor, ignoring it. I can only hope Eddie (my cat, not the fly, I don't usually name flies), is conserving his energy for a strategic leap. Yep, sure enough, there he goes. Bam! But he missed, I think, or maybe there's more than one fly. A fly remains, lazily circling the room, just out of reach, like a hawk riding the updrafts.

Speaking of flies, no, speaking of hawks... No, speaking of lazily circling a room, this week we started a new term at the career college. I met some new students at two campuses. Both days I talked way too much. That's normal for a new start. What is not normal is to meet a class, and then find out I will be swapping classes with another instructor for the rest of the term.

An instructor I will call Amy also makes the trek to Wilsonville every other day. We are nomads, no place to sit, no computer to call our own. You know, like adjuncts. The main difference between us is Amy is losing her job at the end of the term, and I (as far as I know right now) am not. I won't say Amy has lost the will to live, that would be overly dramatic, but she seems to have evolved past the “Let me help you” stage of teaching into the “I don't give a rat's ass, figure it out yourself” stage. I know she's a good teacher. I think she no longer cares. (And who could blame her.)

Now that I've denigrated her, in her defense I should say Amy was assigned to teach a subject she has no business teaching: Excel. She isn't a computer person. She's muddled through keyboarding, and fumbled through PowerPoint, but it was clear today she met her match. I was sitting with my seven-person College & Career Success class, when suddenly Amy appeared at the door, looking pale and desperate.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Could you come up to the lab when you have a minute?”

Five minutes later I dismissed my class and went up to the computer lab on the second floor. I eased in through the door and looked around. She had a class of maybe 15 students, half of them out of their seats, milling around the printer. The room was bustling with activity. Amy was helping an older woman who looked confused. Amy looked up as I came in.

“Oh, we figured it out.”

I watched for a couple minutes. Amy came over to me, and we whispered together. She told me she shouldn't be teaching Excel, because she didn't know what she was doing. I mentioned what I was teaching: College & Career Success and PowerPoint, two classes she has taught before. Her eyes lit up. I could tell she would be thrilled to take those two classes, if only I would take the Excel class off her hands.

Part of me was like, yes! I get to be a hero, and then my next thought was, Oh no, I think there are some people in this class who have never used Excel before. Possibly they haven't even used a computer before.The smell of fear was in the air. That could be a a lot of work. On the other hand, I would be down to five preps instead of six, and that would be less work.

And I could get rid of the talking class. The CCS class. That was the clincher for me. Much as I love helping new students get off on the right foot, I really dislike being the “leader” of a class. I can handle “guide,” “facilitator,” or “coach,” but too much talking wears me down to a nub. What can I say. I'm an introvert. Even seven students can seem like an army when all eyes are on me. In the computer class, doing a demonstration is different from leading a discussion. I don't have to talk about feelings—theirs and mine. I don't have to share. I just have to describe the actions needed to format values, or copy cell contents, or absolute a cell reference. Just the facts.

Like a wimp, I told Amy if she could get permission to swap, I would be willing. She was off like a shot. Within three minutes she was back with a look of profound relief on her face. She announced to the class that I would be taking over come Thursday. I waved at them tentatively. They sized me up. And that was that. As I went off to PowerPoint, I wondered guiltily how the College & Career Success students would feel about having Amy take over their class. After all, it's unprofessional to switch instructors mid-stream, as it were. But the good of the many (15 Excel students) outweighed the good of the few (7 CCS students and 2 PowerPoint students). The utilitarian philosophy wins again.

I haven't seen the fly for a few minutes. My cat is lounging again, stretched out on his favorite blue cotton throw rug. Did he catch and eat that fly, I wonder? Is he looking smug and well-fed? Nuts. Eddie always looks smug and well-fed. He could be digesting a fly. Then again, the fly could have migrated into less turbulent airspace, AKA my bedroom. Guess I'll find out.